Sisterhood: The Raven, The Bluejay and The Parasite
by afalconofmanyfeathers
Summary: What transpired all those years ago on that winter evening spawned a parasitic Homunculus named Hatred. Now it's up to the blue-eyed heroine, Hayden to defeat her. However, she must face the awful truth that the blood feud between them runs deeper than she thinks. Can her sister Raven and the Elrics help her or will Hatred win this battle once again?
1. Prologue

Rain consumed in ice thrummed against the winter-dead grass, draining away what small amount of thermal heat the blades may still contain. It was one of those nights that have shadows within shadows, one of those nights plagued by a harsh winter, one of those nights no one in the right mind would even contemplate venturing out into.

Oddly enough there were people who, having a right mind, made a plan to sneak away into this evening. However, they were too young and far too clueless.

Encircled by frost-bitten pines sat a vacant and spacious shed. Its contents varied from cryptic novels to abandoned work supplies and faded blueprints of lost thoughts given up long ago, judging by the society of dust gathered upon them. The windows, surprisingly, lay still intact save for one hanging mildly ajar. The walls were weathered and sturdy, having withstood many long winters including this one which may very well be its very last. Every now and again a spine-chiller would slink through the slightly open window and disrupt the dormant innards followed shortly by the sighing of the elderly and sleepy walls.

The worn hinges of the door groaned with reluctance as the door was pushed open followed by two young girls scampering in after it to escape the harsh environment outside. The two shoved the door shut as the spine-chiller wind and the accompanied freezing rain attempted to make a dash into the shed. The door creaked in its old reluctance as it shut on the fingers belonging to the hazards outside. Frigid and confined by a partially warm solitude, the girls flitted around in order to get their plan to hit the ground running.

At the pull of a string the lazed coils sparked to a dim life, illuminating the place while casting nostalgic shadows of the past. They mused in silence and darted across the walls telling the stories of a past long lost but never long forgotten.

The young girls ran about, setting everything in motion. The old wooden floor now decorated with the filigree of the Taboo. There was an immediate silence as though everything had halted to stare, appalled, at the two doing such a despicable act. Then suddenly, the harshness of the weather increased as spine-chillers hissed and backed away from the outer interior and shrieked in disgust, the frozen rain battered the outside of the walls, the clouds in the upper atmosphere thickened with unease, the nearest pines scratched at the shed and whipped their limbs against the elderly wood all to try and tell the girls they could not do this.

They, taking position on either end of the large circumference, remained unfazed by the chaos outside the weakening walls. They stared at each other for a long time and jumped as something crashed in the distance. Thunder? A tree giving way, perhaps? Who knows, the only focus now was their task at hand.

"Erm…Raven…?" A meek voice muttered on the south-west head of the circle, "I don't really know about this…I mean…" Her deep brown eyes gazed around the old place, pinpointing now forming holes in the caving elderly walls, "I'm not afraid or anything but at the same time don't you suppose this isn't one of our more brilliant ideas?"

The one called Raven, whose deep gold gaze was focused down on the engravings beneath her small hands, looked up through her black hair from the opposing head of the circle. She was silent for a moment deciding if there was really an answer to that question that she could give to her close friend. Her voice was confident and sure but her body was shaking, "Of course! Yeah, sure, it's dangerous but well…" She flashed a grin, "C'mon Sybil, we can finally take back what we've unfairly lost. Doesn't that seem to be more important than something that poses a risk to us?"

Sybil's frown deepens feeling the sting of the memories with her older brother and she stares at Raven seeing in her golden eyes the sisters Raven had lost to this very same fate they were about to commit. Sybil takes a deep breath and exhales, smiling at her dear friend and nodding, "Right. I just remember that your sisters…" She paused, unsure of what to say so she stammered over her words, "Were…erm…you know," She drew a frail finger across her throat and continued, "by this very thing we're planning on doing now."

Raven's eyes darken with a faint sorrow and her smile falters, "I'm aware of what happened to them but it won't happen to us."

"How are you so sure? We can d-"

"Sybil!" Raven's calm tone escalates into a shout and Sybil flinches at her anger, "Don't you dare say we're going to die as well! I don't want to hear you say that! Think of Hunter, wouldn't he want to hug you at least one more time? Or even Ember and Alexa! They would be damn happy to come home! To come back, Back to us!"

Sybil waited for her friend's tirade to end and she sat watching as Raven's shoulders shook with withheld sobs. Sybil shook her head and smiled at her friend with renewed exuberance, "Well, then I guess there's nothing to worry about."

Raven looked up at Sybil and immediately perked up, and flashed a grin while settling down into her position and watching Sybil do the same. "Then let's get this thing in gear!" Sybil nods in agreement while her mind races.

**§**

Pacing around the cluttered room is another small girl, no older than the age of 7. She goes by the name of Hayden. She was once a charismatic creature but life was not kind to her as time dragged on. This night was no exception, it made her life worse but that's getting ahead of our tale.

Hayden stops and turns to the large doors leading to a small balcony, the handles were chained together so as to prevent her from escaping. Her sharp blue eyes glared through the glass to the angry weather outside and as Hayden opened her mouth the glass doors trembled with an unforgiving wind. "Something is wrong." She says to the vengeful weather consuming the night. "I don't know what but something is severely wrong!" Hayden speaks to no one but her lonesome and worried self.

Hayden squinted at the sky and again a strange occurrence brewed. The wind shrieked in rage and the frozen rain pelted the doors, causing its chains to hiss and the glass to start cracking. It seemed with every scrutinized glare the child sent to the atmosphere it responded in a wrath as though Nature herself understood the severity of the situation at hand.

The young girl hadn't noticed what she was doing until her instincts suddenly sent Hayden to the ground. She quickly transmuted a protective shield on impulse from the wooden floorboards as a brute force shattered both of the doors, and sending glass flying everywhere. The young one listened as the wind beckoned her and the air tugged at Hayden's exposed feet and hands. It was as though Nature wanted Hayden to answer some sort of a siren's calling on this inevitable eve.

Hayden crawled away from her shield and grinned, "Holy Hell! Didja see that!? It's like they know what I'm asking of them!" The child's excitement at being able to completely take advantage of what she can do wears off as she noted that she is still alone and no one was there to witness her capability to bend Nature and her glory.

She made her way to the now open balcony, shaking off her adrenaline, and clambered down an adjoining pine tree to reach the ground. Below, the ground is unforgiving in its coldness; even through a bundle of footwear, Hayden's feet froze, sending spikes of sheer cold up her legs. Despite this, however, Hayden moves along towards a makeshift stable under the cover of strong boughs.

Hayden scampered inside, the lanterns lighting up as she stepped in. She went directly to her horse which raised its restless head and nickered as though protesting what her Familial human was doing. "I know, I know. But it's for a good reason. I'll come back promptly without harm, you know how sturdy I am right, Ransom?"

The buckskin Ishvalan Mustang snorted and looked over at her in dismay. "Mistress," Ransom began. She spoke by means of a telepathic language which is built upon a strong and loving bond. However, she was silenced by Hayden's hands clamping around her muzzle.

"Hush, Ransom! I'll not have you trying to coax me into ignoring this feeling. What if it is my sister? I refuse to lose another! Have you forgotten that if I'm the only one left, Mother will have my head!?"

Ransom shook herself free of Hayden's grip and settles herself into the warmth of the stall while glaring at Hayden with her amber eyes. "Not if I get to you first." It was a playful remark, but Hayden knew it was serious at the same time. The equine snorted and stomped a hoof with a narrowed gaze to prove her point.

The small child with the striking blue eyes laughed despite herself and turns. "Then I'll be sure to make certain that I don't leave a trail after this!" And before either one of them could say anything more she bursts into a full run, heading in the direction that the spine-chilling wind directed her.

_This isn't happening…no…this can't be happening! Not to them, not to the only people I have left! _And her tears froze before they even ran down her raw cheeks.

**§**

Raven and Sybil prepared themselves, settling their racing adrenaline levels and slowing down their eager hearts. All the requirements were set and in place but they refused to acknowledge the error of their ways for risk of never gaining back what they had long lost. In unison, they raised their hands, clapped them together and slammed them upon the lines of the dreaded circle.

There was a moment of silence when even the tumult outside seemed to become hushed. However, it didn't last long! A striking show of static light began to pulse from the circle and around the girls. For just one moment, they thought it just may have worked in their favor.

It is never as it seems though.

**§**

Hayden reached the elderly cabin, and not a moment too soon. For what was beheld by her blue eyes made her spring into action. With the wind running it's fingers along her spine and the winter's wrath propelling her forward with an inhuman strength, she vaulted for the old door. As she collided with the wood with such force backed by the elements of a storm, it blew forward with such momentum that it nearly was taken off the stubborn rustic hinges.

The small girl bursts into the room, sending sheer cold natural fury to battle with the torrent of impure lighting coming from the committed Taboo. The two forces battle in the inner atmosphere, shaking the shed to its elder core. The wooden walls trembled with the powers fighting for dominance in its belly.

She stared at the scene before her, unfolding like the pages of an accursed horror novel. The tendrils were already apparent and looking for a morsel to steal away into whatever purgatory they were born from. Hayden's nightmares have now been personified and it terrified her beyond comparison of anything else she had experienced.

"Raven…!" Hayden shrieked, before lunging for her sibling and pushed her to the side. She steadied herself by placing her hand upon the cursed transmutation.

******§**

Raven turned away from the circle just in time to watch as her sibling shoves her aside. Sybil abandoned her post and comes to her aide.

"Who the hell-?!" Raven begins, only to be quieted by Sybil's calming words and the insurmountable pain wracking her head. _Who is she? How does she know me? Wait…I think it's…Could it be? _Raven pushed through her blurred thoughts and moved to look around Sybil and at this stranger giving off a strange aura of both power and deafening fear. "Hayden…" Raven breathed.

The girl looked to her sister and smiled upon hearing her name. "Yes, Raven." She responded, while Sybil grins like the semi-clueless girl she is. However, the reunion did not last long for all of a sudden a tendril of darkened matter shoots forth and snagged Raven's right leg, tearing at the flesh before ripping it off at the knee and devouring it.

**§**

Neither Hayden nor Sybil had ever heard such a terrible and pain-drenched scream of agony before. Blood poured everywhere, the rustic scent blackening Hayden's already petrified way of thinking.

"Run…!" She rasped over her surmounting urge to vomit due to the gore, the influx of tendrils, the toll of starting to lose consciousness. Sybil, also attempting to fight off the urge of ailment, hoisted up Raven and trudged to the broken door, to find a route of escape. Standing in the doorway with horrified eyes was the mare, Ransom.

"Take them!" Hayden screamed over the roar of power coming from the circle. The tendrils had begun traveling around her torso insistent on constricting her airways. "Get them away from here…" Ransom let the two panicked girls come onto her back but she would not budge, she would not leave without the girl who she maintained a bond with. The tendrils began to drag Hayden away and Ransom stepped forward as an advance to rescue her. Hayden lurched forward against the tendrils corroding and yanking at her flesh. "No!" She bellowed at the top of her lungs as outside the wind howled in a banshee-like screech. "I told you to take them and go!"

With that, the mare staggered back and galloped off, carrying two terrified girls away from the scene before them. They watched for a moment as a sister and good friend was being dragged down with overwhelming power, never to be ever seen again.

Hayden, being consumed by the hand-like tendrils, passed out and does not wake until something forced her to come back to consciousness…

**§**

Within the darkness that is The Gate, in its depths of torment and tumultuous truths, comes whispers of a being, speaking outright about their human guest.

"We have a guest…" Comes a voice.

"Yes, a lovely morsel for us to devour…" Echoed another.

"Hush! She is not to be eaten, she must simply be used." Stated the central voice, dripping with authority.

The monstrosity with its three heads leaned over the body lain upon its threshold. The Cerberus-like creature hovered over the smallish body of the young girl.

"C'mon, let's eat her, she is nothing to us." One of the heads croaked, contemplating having the morsel for dinner.

However, the main head and the one with the control as it were thought otherwise. You see, she figured that this smallish human girl could help her and the migraine-inducing cohorts get free of their chains here. And this is exactly what the parasite planned to use her for.

The creature stood over the body of the smallish child and using one of the tendrils floating about, nudges the child awake…

**§**

Slipping back into what seems like reality; Hayden awakes and stared up into the violet hellfire eyes of a monstrosity she would come to know as her parasite. She scuttled away from the beast and stifled a screech of sheer terror. She looked around for a means of escape but all she laid her gaze upon is shrouded in darkness. Occasional flickers of the world outside of this hell-born wonderland were still within her sight.

"Wh-where am I?" She muttered with a tentative tongue, her voice echoing around the abysmal blackness shrouding everything around her. The beast shifts and she discovered that the being standing before her was not alone nor was it small in stature.

Another pair of hellfire eyes appeared to the left of the main set, and then another followed by a sinister smile of ivory fangs. These were the only things marking the beast and how much of it there was.

"You are in something close to Hell, Hayden." The beast mused, being echoed by its two companion heads. Its voice resonated with a behemoth of a pulse nearly like thunder on the horizon. "You are in a place known as The Gate."

"The Gate?!" Hayden exclaimed in mild disbelief. "No…Oh no, no, no." She stood up shakily, the ground beneath her small feet seemingly moving uncontrollably. She shook her head, making her hair dance about her juvenile features. For a long while she says nothing and instead listened to the sound of her infuriated heart and the restless breathing of the being before her. "This cannot be true!" She bellowed at last.

Her outburst only caused the being before her to cackle with mocking notes. "Well it is true. But there is a way out…" The beast's voice trails off and its grin fades back into darkness.

"A way out?" Hayden strode unsteadily forward, a pain and foreboding causing her head to mull over with uncertainty. "How? Tell me!"

The monstrosity shifted on its hooves or feet, or whatever it may be resting upon for it came closer to Hayden. So much closer in fact that it is certain Hayden could feel its wretched breath against her exposed flesh. "The only way out is by providing me a way out. Are you willing to help me in exchange for your freedom?"

_Freedom…_

_Freedom…_

The word echoed around the atmosphere and begged for Hayden's cooperation. And like a fool she decided to accept the offer. "Yes." She said after a few heartbeats.

The Cheshire Cat grin returned to the unknown face of the monster while on either side of that sinister grin is like a fun-house mirror of horrors. The main expression is supported by two equally eerie expressions from the other heads. The Cerberus extends a large hand-like paw to the girl as the opposing heads nodded. The whispering of their wondrously encouraging words were utterly deafening to her ears.

"All you have to do is use your body to carry me out when you're called back. It'll be a painful experience but it will work both ways. And as soon you are back in your own actuality, I will leave you to yourself."

"And Raven?"

"I will leave her be as well." The opposing heads chant a little louder, in order to sway the child's judgment even more.

The little girl stared into the many eyes of her company and pondered this for a moment. _I can get out of here and Raven will be alright. But why do I get the feeling there's a catch? No…maybe it's just me. Surely everything will be fine, right?_

The monstrosity sneered down at the girl while she was thinking and sighed. "Look," It began after sensing the girl would not be speaking for quite some time. "Do we have a deal?" In a flash of reddened lightning the hand-like paw became a feasible human hand, marred only by the tendrils of smoky shadows flitting away from the flesh.

Hayden looked at the hand, hesitating for a moment then extended her own hand toward the beasts offered one. "We have a…" She paused before grasping the palm of the other party but thrust away all decrepit thoughts and grasped the other beings hand with vigor. "We have a deal." Hayden said finitely.

The beast smiled and in a flash everything once again was falling away from Hayden. She was once more plummeted into blackness and the abysmal bowels of The Gate. Her only company being the hyena laughter and snippets of pictures of a truth that she had just gotten herself into.

_Oh no…!_

The pain began and intensified as information upon information is thrust into her young mind. The pain, debilitating as it was inevitable, consumed and swallowed Hayden once more into a surreal abyss.


	2. Chapter 1

"…And then the monstrous creature held me in her grasp, stared me down and do you know what I told it about making a deal?" Hayden was saying, waving her arms about to indicate the sheer massive size of the beast she had encountered around nine years ago as well as the action of being scooped up in the palm of a huge paw and constricted by human-like fingers.

Her audience, a sarong of small children formally labeled as miniature gypsies, crowd together and chatter excitedly as they ooh and ahh upon Hayden's dramatized encounters with some mystical beast that may or may not have existed. Either way, the little ones were quite taken with Hayden's ways of storytelling.

"What didja tell it?" Inquired one seemingly wan boy.

"Well," Hayden began, gaining back the attention of the jabbering adolescents. "I told that horrid beast to take its deal and shove it right up it's no good a-"

"Hayden!" Barked a seasoned woman who stood behind Hayden and glowered down at her.

She flinches at her name being called with such ferocity and sharpness but nevertheless turns around to stare up into the face and meet the gaze of the one who had summoned her. "Yes, Helena?" Hayden says tentatively but with an underlying note of reluctance to listen.

Helena was a somewhat old woman, being in her forties if not a bit older. Her skin was still rigid against her lanky bone structure and the pigment carried a medium tan to it. This contrasted greatly with her platinum gold hair and equally metallic eyes. She was a short-tempered woman with a bite to match her overly outright bark.

At least, that is how it seems to Hayden whom of which always seems to be on the bad end of things. Or maybe Helena just had a dour way of using affections.

The aged woman called Helena reaches down, grips Hayden's ponytail and yanks the girl into a standing position. "What did I tell you about using profanities with the young-bloods?" She snarls in Hayden's ear.

Hayden winces at her flaxen hair being pulled so taunt and glances over her shoulder to meet the steel grey-gold gaze of her 'attacker'. "Come now, Helena, surly it is worse that their young minds are exposed to violence, especially from the eldest role-model they have."

With that being said, Helena releases Hayden's hair and replaces her scowl with a smile. She looks to the children and ushers them away. Once the jabbering gypsies were well out of good hearing range, Helena spins on her heel to once more be face-to-face with Hayden. "Why do you make things so difficult for me, Hayden? I try my very best to raise these children to be respectable adults but you seem to be utterly against that." Her metallic eyes narrow.

Hayden simply stares at Helena for a long while before raising her chin in stubbornness. "You're beginning to sound like my mother." She spits to the seasoned woman.

"Someone has to."

She looks at Helena, her blue fire eyes wide. "Are you implying that…?" Hayden begins but is silenced by the look within the sharpened depths of Helena's eyes.

Helena comes towards Hayden, takes Hayden's face within her hands and presses her lips to her pale forehead. "Perhaps I have come to love you after all." She whispers into Hayden's hairline. "However," She pulls away and stares into the abysmal azure eyes. "Don't get your hopes up, hmm? I'm not one for the whole touchy-feely crap." She releases Hayden's face and turns to leave.

"Helena, wait."

And so she does, bracing herself for what this teenager had to say to her.

"I hate you too." Hayden whispers, her voice carrying on a light breeze to the elder's ears.

Ever so slightly, Helena's lips pull into one of those rare smiles before she continues to walk away, leaving Hayden to her own devices, whatever they may be.

The sixteen year-old watches at the woman strides away into the distance, perhaps to train the children for their performance this evening. Speaking of which, Hayden had her own routine to be practicing for the festivities that shall be taking place later on and Heaven forbid she not nail every miniscule detail for Helena would have Hayden's fine pale ass on a silver platter in a millisecond if she ruined the gypsies' already besmirched reputation with her mediocrity. The blue-eyed one ponders the idea of her and Helena caught in combat over something so petty. It would be nothing new, it happened quite often whether or whether not Hayden was purposely trying to tick her off.

Eventually, Hayden left her post with a heavy sigh and began to wander around Winla. It is a rustic town, caught a decade or so in the past but the people here are kind and open-minded, that is however so long as one is not one of the mutts of the military. Gypsies and criminals are all well and good here but it's State Alchemists and people of the like these natives have a serious problem with. When that thought managed to work its way into Hayden's pretty little skull she gripped her pendant all the more tighter as she passed by and greeted people. Hayden swallows hard and moves quicker through the more populated part of Winla, and at last finally entering the more rural part where less and less people milled about. She slows, inhaling the scents of summertime and savoring them for a moment or so before making her way into a stable.

"Oh Royalty's Ransom! Where are you, pretty girl?" The female coos into the depths of the four-stalled run down place.

There comes a soft nicker, a sign that the mare was awake and expecting her beloved human to show up. Trotting out of one of the stalls is the equine, tossing her deep brown mane with her ears pricked forward and her head raised in the most regal of ways. There comes a deep feminine voice within Hayden's mind as Ransom touches her muzzle to her human's cheek, "Welcome back, Mistress, have you come for a ride or is something troubling you?" The mare nuzzles Hayden's pale cheek. "I sense you feel a tad concerned over something."

No matter how many times Ransom was able to read her, Hayden was always daunted by how easily she could do so. She should know by now how perceptive this majestic creature was, shouldn't she? After all, they had been together nearly eight years if not longer. The teenager sighs and turns to place a light kiss on her Familiar's dark hued muzzle. "You never cease to amaze me, Ransom." She says against the velvety skin before pulling back to stare into those big amber eyes.

"Your flattery tells me you want something."

Hayden smirks. "I want you to take me back to Skelton, just for one day."

The horse stares at her human, a look of blatant worry crossing her features. "But Skelton is your hometown, the place where you…" The voice trails off, not wanting to relive that winter evening so long ago.

"I know, I know." The blue-eyed one says, giving another sigh. "I just want to check up on my sister."

"Raven? You two have not seen each other since the incident."

"Please, Ransom? Can we not argue about this?"

"Mistress, don't you think someone will see you? Won't it raise questions?"

Hayden ponders this a moment. "We'll cut through the forested areas to get to my old home." She looks pleadingly at her loyal steed. "Ransom, do not make me get down on my knees and actually beg for your agreement."

Ransom remains silent, then snorts in defeat.

Hayden throws her arms around the horse's neck, hugging the mare tightly. "We'll leave as soon as you're ready!"


End file.
